There are many ways to get involved with the Earth Sciences research community at the University of Birmingham.
Public engagement activities
In collaboration with the outstanding and redeveloped Lapworth Museum of Geology, we offer a range of outreach activities for the public, family and school groups and adult and specialist education groups. These include school visits to the Museum, research demonstrations and talks in schools, the Lapworth Lecture series, Café Scientifique in Birmingham, the University’s annual Community Festival and Arts and Science Festival, the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival and many other outreach activities throughout the year.
If you would like further information about outreach events, or to find out what we could do for your school, event or community group, please contact Aerona Moore (a.moore.3@bham.ac.uk), the Learning and Community Development Officer for the Lapworth Museum of Geology.
Study with us
Undergraduate study
All of our research staff can offer research experience placements to students on our undergraduate degrees. These provide students with the opportunity to work on an active research project of international importance, often assisting with the primary data collection that will lead to future publications. Many students have helped co-author research papers based on their research experience placements. Staff can help apply for independent bursaries to support this work, with recent funding coming from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Palaeontological Association (Palass). Please contact any academic staff member for details.
Postgraduate research
We have a large, talented and highly motivated group of doctoral researchers, working on a diverse range of field-, lab- and desk-based PhD projects. We actively encourage applicants for Doctoral Research Programs within Earth Sciences. Within the School we have access to research studentship funding from the NERC CENTA Doctoral Training Partnership. We also encourage and support applicants to a diverse range of scholarship schemes, and can also consider self-funded applicants. Our postgraduate student body is diverse, with many international students – at present including from Malaysia, Iraq, Brazil, Columbia, Oman, Tanzania, Germany, Ghana, Ireland and the Netherlands.
View our undergraduate and postgraduate earth sciences courses
Join our research group
We actively welcome and support fellowship applications to strengthen the breadth and depth of research within the group. This is supported by the University, which has funded three Fellowship positions in the Earth Sciences Group through the sector-leading Birmingham Fellowship programme. In recent years we have hosted Royal Society, Marie Curie, NERC, Leverhulme Trust and Royal Commission of 1851 Fellows. For further information please contact any relevant member of academic staff.
Partner with us
We actively engage with business partners across the range of Earth Science disciplines. In particular we have very strong industry links within our Hydrogeology MSc and our Applied and Petroleum Micropalaeontology MSc programmes, which both have a strong applied and professional training focus. Our expertise in seismic processing and interpretation involves multiple collaborations with seismic data acquisition and geophysical site survey companies, as well as Exploration and Production companies within the Oil and Gas Sector.
Within our undergraduate programmes we have active partnerships with companies in the mining sector, with the deployment and development of state-of-the-art visualisation and mapping tools being an element of our undergraduate degrees.
Through our palaeobiology staff and the Lapworth Museum of Geology we have excellent links to the museum and culture sector, and are interested in building partnerships around developing innovative digital interactions with our rich geological collections and archive.